Listen ~ The Maze Runner ~ Newt

20 ~ Glade

3rd P.O.V

In The Maze

~~~~~

When the sun came up that morning, Newt felt so drained of all his emotions and everything else in his life that he knew tonight was the night he had to stop his pain. Everything in him hurt with the heavy thought that Dani might have been dead, and it hurt even more when he thought about living without her.

But more importantly, he felt pathetic. He was young, and as far as his memories were concerned this was the first girl he had ever loved. Yes, loved. And there were sure to be plenty more people he could fall in love with. She was only one girl. But that one girl meant everything to him, and that's why he wasn't pathetic for feeling this way. Yet that didn't change how he thought about it.

So, when he woke up in Dani's bed, surrounded by her smell. By her clothes. By her belongings. He decided he needed to spend one last day with his friends to passively tell them he loved them before leaving them.

He didn't bother changing before leaving her hut and making his way to breakfast, he knew that everybody understood he was going through a massively hard time and they weren't people to judge him.

Despite that though, when he made it to the breakfast tables he had a lot of the boys' attention on him. It didn't bother him though, he realised that practically nobody had seen him in the past 2 weeks and it was a pretty big shock to them to finally be seeing him again. Even better, the shock his friends had when he sat in his usual spot, that they had kept empty for him this whole time, was enough to make Newt feel a little happier about himself.

But still, nothing was changing his plan.

~~~~~

"Wow... He's actually alive!" Minho gasps as he notices the skinny blonde boy that was sat across him for the first time in what felt like an eternity. "I wouldn't go as far to say that..." Newt mumbled back, retracting his hands in his dirty jumper before placing his chin on them. As he looked around the table, everybody was giving him sympathetic smiles. Alby looked somewhat proud that Newt had gotten out of the hut himself, and even through the jokes, Minho seemed relieved that he was there. Gally was proud like Alby too, and FryPan was just happy to see Newt again as he hadn't seen him since Dani had disappeared. He didn't dare invade Newt's privacy.

"It's good to see you man. You want me to go and cook you up some toast? Or even some pancakes? I can cook up anything you want." FryPan asked softly, looking too pleased to be offering to go and do more work. Newt shook his head a little and looked down to the table, not feeling in the mood to really talk. But then he knew that would just be rude. "No thanks, Fry. I'm not hungry." Newt said to the youngest of the boys, his voice hoarse and broken.

"Come on Newtie, you gotta eat something." Minho pipes up from the other side of the table, his mouth half full of bacon. Newt shook his head again, "Like I said, I'm not hungry." "But-" Minho goes to protest, but is cut off before he can run his mouth any further. "Minho. Ease up. We just got the guy back, so don't push him into doing something he doesn't want to do." Alby says from beside Newt, giving Minho a death stare to shut him up.

Minho goes quiet and nods his head, giving Newt an apologetic smile before going back to his bacon sandwiches.

After a few minutes of silence, Newt finally speaks up again, feeling guilty that he caused the silence over them. "So..." He breathed out, "What did I miss?"

"Not much man." Gally answered, already having finished his breakfast. "Minho thinks he's getting closer to finding a way out of The Maze." He says, nudging the boy with his elbow, giving him a tesing smirk. Minho scowls back at him, "Hey shuckface! I wanted to tell him that! Plus you make it sound revolutionary, when actually I only found a new area of The Maze we haven't been to before."

Newt raises his eyebrows in interest and Minho smirks again, happy that his old best-friend was resurfacing. "Basically, it's this huge area with loads and loads of rows of blades that can rotate on the spot. Sounds cool, and it is don't get me wrong, it's just the griever part that makes it not cool. When I got there, a griever was already there. Scared the living klunk outta me cause I wasn't expecting him to be there. It was only just nearing dusk anyway so I have no clue as to why he really was there, but I wasn't staying around long enough to find out because he heard me running and started chasing after me. I lost him after I escaped the new area thankfully, but still. I found a new cool place."

Newt let out a small laugh, which felt especially weird seeming as he hadn't felt anything close to what resembled happiness in a good 14 days or so. The sound made the guys around him smile even harder and even some of them chuckle.

After the light laughter had died out, Alby turned to face Newt and gave him a soft smile. "So are you slowly working yourself back into your normal routine again, or jumping in at the deep end?" He asks, confusing Newt enough to make him frown. "What I'm asking is, do you want to come back to work today or not. It's ok if not, I will give you as much time as you need before getting back into the full swing of things." He asks gently.

Newt purses his lips and looks back to his hands, unsure of what to do. "I'm not sure yet..." "And that's completely fine, take as much time as you need and just come find me when you want to come back in." Alby reassures him, clapping him on the shoulder before standing up. "I have some work to facilitate so try and keep out of trouble." He says to the others, giving them a semi-forced smile as he walked away from the table.

"That's a point. Who has been acting as 2nd in command whilst I've been gone?" Newt asks the others. FryPan doesn't pay any notice to the question while Minho and Gally share a glance. "Well..." Minho starts, having Gally jump in after. "We kinda have. It's been weird, Alby hasn't really needed a 2nd in command for much but whenever he isn't around he always sort of assumes that we will take lead if we need to." Newt nods his head at the explanation and feels relieved that the two men in front of him will be able to fill his shoes once he is gone.

Before Newt can think about his well-thought out plan again, a loud siren blares through everyone's ears.

Everybody's eyes widen in shock, and within a few seconds of confused stillness falling over The Gladers, chaos erupts. The younger boys leap from their seats and start sprinting towards the box, knowing the sound of that siren all too well.

"What the shuck?" Minho questions, standing up from his seat quickly before jogging over to the box. "We shouldn't be getting anybody new yet for at least another 2 weeks." Gally continues, looking at Newt cautiously as he knew a lot of things must have been circling through his head right now. Especially because the last time they heard that sound Dani went missing just more than 12 hours later.

Gally gets up from his seat and he too jogs over to the box, leaving FryPan and Newt to be the only ones left in the hall. "You not going to see?" FryPan asks Newt, standing up from his seat while he collected the nearby plates. "I'm-" Newt starts, his voice faltering. "I'm not sure. But what about you?"

"There's no point me getting over there because I won't get a look in at whoever it is like you will. I'm better off staying here. But you should go." FryPan finishes, taking his and his friends plates towards the kitchens again.

Newt sighs and stands up, starting a picked up saunter towards the box. As he got closer to the box the siren stopped, and small whispers arose through the crowds. Before long Newt heard Alby calling his name, which made his heart sink and fill in one swift movement.

"Is it- Dani?" Newt asked as he avidly pushed through the crowd to reach Alby, peering over the edge of the box walls once he reached them. His heart sank again as he looked to Alby, a little bit of anger seeping into his boy towards the boy. "Why did you call me over? I thought it was her..." He said through gritted teeth, his eyes threatening to fill with tears once again.

"No. Not her, but look at his neck." Alby whispered to Newt, pointing to Thomas who had his hand lifted over his face to shield his eyes from the sun. Newt looked at Thomas' neck while Gally helped the boy up and out of the box, and only when Thomas was at eye level did Newt see what Alby was talking about.

"Is it-" Alby started, his head still bowed to be at newt's ear level. "It's Dani's necklace..." Newt finished, feeling even more anger and even sadness and worry fill his body.